The Guide to Putting Yourself First, Fitting in Exercise, Eating Healthier, and Holding Yourself Accountable So You Can Start Leading the Life You Were Meant To Live

“The whole idea of motivation is a trap. Forget motivation. Just do it. Exercise, lose weight, test your blood sugar, or whatever. Do it without motivation. And then, guess what? After you start doing the thing, that’s when the motivation comes and makes it easy for you to keep on doing it.” – John C. Maxwell

Last year, I participated in the Audacity PACT Program by Coach Jennie, which is a virtual group coaching program that takes pretty awesome people and elevates them to the next level. In one of our last group classes together, we discussed motivation. The first thing Jennie said? “Motivation is a crock.”

We all gasped.

“What? How can that be? We all NEED motivation!!!”

Jennie explained: “No. People get stuck on that all the time—the idea that we constantly need motivation. What we actually need is accountability.”

The group on the phone was silent; we were intrigued by this foreign concept.

Right now, I imagine you are scratching your head, thinking the same thing since most of you wrote down “motivation” as one of your biggest challenges with living the healthy lifestyle that you want.

1. Re-starting. You want to get back on track. You fell off the exercise and healthy eating bike, are angry that you fell off, and are too scared/frustrated/busy to get back on by yourself.

2. Forming Habits. You desperately want to make lifestyle changes. But, more importantly, you want to create habits around those changes that actually fit into your lifestyle. You’re looking for a more personalized—and customized—healthy lifestyle plan.

3. Maintaining Consistency. You want a specific plan for your life and you want to stick to it—throughout the holidays, while traveling, and always!

4. Setting Priorities. You know that you should prioritize health and wellness, and you really, really want to, but you constantly struggle with balancing your personal wellness with (oftentimes overwhelming) day-to-day responsibilities.

5. Sustaining Discipline. You want to be disciplined. Taking that a step further, you don’t even want to think about exercising or choosing healthy food options, you simply want it to happen naturally. You don’t want going out to eat, going on vacation, and visiting friends or family throwing you off your plan.

6. Keeping It Easy. You want your healthy lifestyle to be natural and easy. You don’t want to overanalyze or put in tremendous amounts of effort. You wish for your wellness routine to be second nature and you are fascinated by the people who seem to stay healthy with little-to-no effort.

7. Seeking Accountability. You want an accountability partner to help you stay on track because you don’t trust yourself to stay the course alone or you’ve tried and it doesn’t work.

8. Finding Motivation. You want motivation. You want to feel motivated all of the time. You are angry when you aren’t motivated to do anything. You are upset that you cannot motivate yourself to make the healthy changes you want. You think, “If only I had motivation…then I could do everything I wanted.”

Any of these sound familiar?

You are not alone.

These challenges and struggles happen to the best of us, so you need to stop beating yourself up about them. Focusing on the negative will keep you cycling through the same excuses and feeling terrible about yourself.

I have good news, though.

I’m making a free resource to give you that kick in the ass you need to start living the life you want and deserve.